Sunday School, September 5, 2021 15 Pentecost, B proper 18

Sunday School, September 5, 2021     15 Pentecost, B proper 18

Themes

The writers of the Bible often wrote that God is interested in the health of all people.  God is interested in physical health of people.  God desires for people to be healed from their diseases.

God desires people to have enough food, clothing and shelter to be healthy.

So if God desires health and for people to have enough, how is this health going to happen?

In the past, people were afraid for sickness and disease.  People worried about infectious diseases.  Sometimes people who were sick were declared to unclean and so they had to be isolated from other people.

Jesus came to show and prove that God is interested in the health of everyone.

Jesus showed that being God’s chosen people did not just belong to the Jews, it belonged to anyone who has faith. 

Jesus healed the spirit of the young girl.  The girl’s mother had great faith even though she was not a Jew like Jesus and the disciples.  Jesus honored her faith and her daughter was healed.  Jesus had such love and kindness that he could calm the heart of a very troubled young girl.

Jesus also healed a man who could not hear or speak well.  Often the healing stories of Jesus were used as riddles to show how when we can hear the good news about God love, then our hearing is healed.  And when we share the good news of God’s love our tongues can speak well because when we learn how to use our tongues properly, then our tongues are healed.

The writer of the letter of James wrote about how it is not enough to say that we have faith in God; we also have to show that we have faith by doing what God wants.  And God cares for the needy and the sick.  So we need to show how we have faith in God who cares for the needy by being the people to do what God wants in helping those in need.  In this way we show that we have faith by what we do and say in our lives.

Homily

  Can a person say something without speaking?

  Can a person say something with his or her body without saying one word?

  Can you read the body language of a person?

  Let’s see if you can read body language?

  Happy….sad….surprised….Angry…

So our body is always talking, even when we don’t say a word.  Your body is talking right now.

  Where are you right now?  You’re in church.  You’re not in bed.  You’re not at the lake.  You’re not at the football game.  And that tells me something.  It tells me that you want to honor God by coming to worship God and obeying the command of Christ to receive communion together.

  What if I say that I love God and my neighbor and I steal something from you.  Or I hit you.

  What if I say I love God but I never pray or go to church.  What is wrong with that?  It means that my body language is saying something different than my words.

  The writer of the epistle of James said:  Be doers of the word of God and not hearer only.

  You hear many things that your parents and your teachers tell.  They want you to learn many good things.  Sometimes it is easy to be lazy and not do those good things.  And so it is easy to hear words about the good things that we are supposed to do, but it is sometimes harder to actually do them.

  But your parents and teacher would not be nice if they were asking you to do impossible things, would they.  Do your parents ever ask you to do impossible things?

  God does not ask us to do impossible things;  God only asks us to do things that we can do.

  Jesus asked us to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.

  What can you and I do that shows that we love God and our neighbors?  How can we let our body talk?

  So let us remember that it is very important to do God’s word, and not just hear it. 

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

September 5, 2021: The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Gathering Songs:  If You’re Happy; Alleluia, Give Thanks to the Risen Lord; Alleluia; I’ve Got Peace Like a River, May the Lord

Song: If You’re Happy  (Christian Children Songbook  # 124)

If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.  If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.  If your happy and you know it then your face should surely show it, if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.

If you’re happy and you know it stomp your feet.  If you’re happy and you know it stomp your feet.  If you’re happy and you know then your face should surely show it, if you’re happy and you know it stomp your feet.

If you’re happy and you know it, make a high five.  If you’re happy and you know it make a high five.  If you’re happy and you know it then your face should surely show it.  If you’re happy and you know it, make a high five.

If you’re happy and you know it shout Amen!  If you’re happy and you know it shout, Amen!  If you’re happy and you know it then your face should surely show it, if you’re happy and you know it shout Amen!

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People: And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Litany Phrase: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the letter of James

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

 

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 146

Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! * whose hope is in the LORD their God;

Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; * who keeps his promise for ever;

Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, * and food to those who hunger.

The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind; * the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;

The LORD loves the righteous; the LORD cares for the stranger; * he sustains the orphan and widow,
but frustrates the way of the wicked.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark

People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-- the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People: Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon:  Fr. Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (chanted)

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Liturgist:         The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:            And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering.

Song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks, Hymn # 178, in the Blue Hymnal

Refrain: Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to the Risen Lord, Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to his Name.

1.Jesus is Lord of all the earth.  He is the King of creation.  Refrain

2. Spread the good news o’er all the earth: Jesus has died and has risen. Refrain

3. We have been crucified with Christ.  Now we shall live forever. Refrain

4. Come, let us praise the living God, joyfully sing to our Savior. Refrain

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

Children may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. Amen.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

(Children rejoin their parents and take up their instruments)

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:        Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song:  Alleluia (Renew!  # 136)

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

He’s my Savior, Alleluia….

He is worthy, Alleluia…

I will praise him, Alleluia…

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: May the Lord (Sung to the tune of Eidelweiss)

May the Lord, Mighty God, Bless and keep you forever, Grant you peace, perfect peace, Courage in every endeavor.  Lift up your eyes and seek His face, Trust His grace forever.  May the Lord, Mighty God Bless and keep you for ever.

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God! 

Aphorism of the Day, August 2021

Aphorism of the Day, August 31, 2021

"Loving our neighbor as ourselves," should be creative principle of all ventures in life.  What if the so called "free market" used all brain power to creatively take care of the economic needs of all people?  Would that be truly the greatest creative achievement?  We seem to think going to the moon or Mars is creative.  What about creatively taking care of everyone?

Aphorism of the Day, August 30, 2021

People of the world live segregated lives because of differences magnified to a position of recognizing the areas of obvious unity.  Sickness and health are areas of "unity," since they are common experiences to all.   Yet economic and social conditions and religious preference can keep us segregated regarding the ministry to sick people.  When the woman from Tyre, a foreigner, had faith to overcome the Jew/non-Jew barrier in seeking the ministry of Jesus the healer, her faith was the the kind of health/salvation which the Jesus Movement was promoting.  If one's brand of "salvation" keeps one separated from other people, it is not the salvation of Christ.

Aphorism of the Day, August 29, 2021

Do we feel sorry for biblical people for not have computers and automobiles? No.  Do we think that they are inferior or simply accept that they lived under the conditions of their time.  The Amish seem to believe that technology should stop at a certain age and no longer develop.  We could take the same attitude in our thinking as well and dismiss all post-biblical thinking as unacceptable innovations.  If we accept automobiles and computers in the post-biblical times, we can update our thinking too and realize that biblical discourse is more aesthetic discourse and not scientific discourse or modern eye-witness journalistic writing.  There is no problem if one does not limit truth to either of these.

Aphorism of the Day, August 28, 2021

No one including the great saints is omni-competent for all future promulgation of virtue.  As much as Augustine of Hippo is admired for many of his wise and profound spiritual writing, he was also an architect for how women and their roles were regarded for a long period of Christian practice, and some of the misogyny of his influence continues today. (Augustine did not regard himself to be a misogynist, he was simply tying cultural practice to what he regarded to be absolute biblical theology, which also represented cultural practice regarding women.  He saw himself as being faithful to a "tradition"). How do we deliver Augustine from the cultural influences of his time that he etched firmly in his writings about women?  What more recent obvious understandings in the full equality of women stands as a needed correction for biblical and subsequent cultures which did not regard the full capacity of women but kept them locked within limited cultural roles, most often in simply their necessity in the procreation role?  Certainly we know that women are more than their wombs; they have expansive capacities that bless the world if we allow them the opportunity to develop their full being.

Aphorism of the Day, August 27, 2021

Any one who has attempted mediation can experience the mind as the "proverbial devil's playground" mocking the meditator's ability to "control" every sort of float thought which seems to enter the mental field.  All sorts of things can occur within oneself and one can despair of ever having a pure inward environment if one makes the presumption that one is supposed to be pure independent of God who can make us pure derived from God's own declaration in Christ of us being pure and having within us a pure Holy Spirit who is continuously from the beginning pure on our behalf within us.  Grace does abound in co-existence with sin, if we accept it.

Aphorism of the Day, August 26, 2021

The fallacy of strong external religious control over people's lives is that such control can move from suppression to oppression on behalf of the clergy.  Strong external suppression does not deal with the morass within a person which has been coded by living with imperfect people.  Strong external controls means that "acting out" must happen in "private" and so the weak get exploited.  Religion as external control misses the point of the human dilemma, namely, that people need interior work of transformation in doing spiritual alchemy with base desire so that it can be redirected with intense valuing of God beyond all of the objects of projection on which desire logically falls.

Aphorism of the Day, August 25, 2021

Jesus said, "All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." The Bible includes a record of people struggling with their internal "defilement."  How is defilement known?  By the promulgation of standards of what is undefiled or "pure."  By "laws" or statutes or commandments of recommended best behaviors.  Law have a suppressing function in external nurture or environmental controls.  The fear of external punishment for bad behaviors creates a suppressing force to not act out on inward motives and desires which don't express the best behaviors.  The Gospel is about an internal conversion, a new creation in finding an original good source within oneself to generate the power to produce recommended behaviors.  This new birth is the capacity to experience one's original blessing in the deepest human memory.

Aphorism of the Day, August 24, 2021

Jesus said, "All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."  These words indicate a problem with the inner lives of people.  Jeremiah said the heart was deceitful above all things. Freud said that the unconscious life is polymorphously perverse.  Jesus found the religious behavior of some to be akin to putting "lipstick on a pig."  How does one have a clean heart instead of performing religious acts to cover up the fact that there is nothing clean within?  How does the inner life become defiled, except that it gets coded with imperfect cultural patterns which determine selfish interactions with other people.

Aphorism of the Day, August 23, 2021

Jesus said, "All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."  This was a response regarding the efficacy of ritual purification.  Through our language environment our inner word life gets polluted and our desires get misdirected in our interaction with our external world.  The spiritual work always has to do with reconstitution of our inner word life so that desire, our life force and engine, can be rightly directed.

Aphorism of the Day, August 22, 2021

If the image of God is already on everyone's life, though most often unknown or forgotten, and if that image is renewed the experience of knowing the Risen Christ within oneself, what is the purpose of receiving the bread of heaven in the Eucharist as a presence of Christ?  Can one "amass" presences of Christ as a quantitative experience as in the more communions, the better?  The Eucharist is an "anamnesis" or a dynamic remembrance within a community.  It means that one is delivered from merely a "private" experience of presence as one is united in the group dynamic.  The image of the divine may seem to be "private" but one of the functions of the Eucharist is to deliver people from thinking that they "own" a "private" presence of Christ.  One can see people who think that they have "Jesus" in their pocket rubber stamping all kinds of their personal fancies, including who they think Jesus wants to wins elections.  The Eucharist is a witness against false approbations that occur in highly individualized experiences of Christ which express more individual ego than Christ.

Aphorism of the Day, August 21, 2021

There is one unavoidable theism of the Bible.  In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  Word or language is unavoidable in human life and if it is also God, then God is unavoidable.  To deny God is to deny Word and Language.

Aphorism of the Day, August 20, 2021

In articulating one's faith, one needs to let come to language what one is persuaded about.  Faith is about being persuaded.  Our life patterns and values reveal what we are persuaded about and so everyone has faith.  It might be persuasion is mainly about what is best for oneself since each person is in some ways a prisoner to one's own version about everything in life even though one's version of everything else has been modeled by exemplars in one's environment.  The logic of dealing with the relative adequacies of persuasions within a community is setting standards for the common good and the best social strategies for those standard.  Are love and the incarnate love known as justice, the best things to be persuaded about?  The strategy of Jesus for love and justice seems to be inadequate in a social Darwinism when freedom is expressed as the strong and fit selfishly surviving to the detriment of the weak.  Advocates persuaded by love and justice need to persuasively make the case for the ultimate benefit of love and justice for the most people.  One can note that "Empire Christians" have sold their souls to social Darwinism by acting as though it is "God ordained" to be in league with those with wealth and political power.

Aphorism of the Day, August 19, 2021

Think of the Bible as a book of the collection of the piety of people in the art of living with reference to a relationship with God and their community identity.  Don't treat it as science and eye witness journalism.

Aphorism of the Day, August 18, 2021

In John's Gospel, many things which are not literally Jesus become metaphors for him.

Aphorism of the Day, August 17, 2021

"In the beginning was the Word...."  This is the key to interpreting John's Gospel because the use of language in John's Gospel hides the secret of the mystagogy of the Johannine church.

Aphorism of the Day, August 16, 2021

John's Gospel presents the physical world as a metaphor for the spiritual world to emphasize that the inner world has the equal substantiality of believability as the outer world.  The disciples who are "literal" and offended by the instruction to eat the flesh and drink his blood, are rebuked for being literal and failing to understand that the words of Jesus are Spirit and life.  The spiritual flesh and blood of Jesus made one with us through his words becoming us inside of us, captures the mysticism of John's Gospel and the Christ-base community which generated it.

Aphorism of the Day, August 15, 2021

The role of Mary is surely a corrective of overly patriarchal society and church in the cosmic consciousness of humanity.  As long a women, children, and poor people exist Mary's role will remain as the holy reminder about God's concern for justice for all.

Aphorism of the Day, August 14, 2021

The Eternal Word is the bread from heaven in John's Gospel.  The Eternal Word is consumed by each person as the language exposure of every developing language user activates the always, already inner language propensity.  How we consume the language influences in our lives in turn forms our inner language propensities as the scripts of our lives are always in formation.  And we are always active playwrights and hopefully, each time our plays get re-performed they manifest editing which add quality to life.

Aphorism of the Day, August 13, 2021

When one takes an abbreviation, a limited metaphor standing in place of Plenitude, too seriously one is easily led to idolatry.  The Creeds are an "abbreviated" interpretation of biblical theology, and the Bible is a very limited abbreviation of relationship with Plenitude.  Let the abbreviations lead us to Plenitude and stand in humble awe rather than limited knowing pride.

Aphorism of the Day, August 12, 2021

Ponder language as sub-atomic bits of electro-physical matter with the ability to encode memory and be accessible in a continual return to its traces and having the conveyance property to analyze its use and its physiological origin with amazing reflexivity and create the identity for a populace of word-constructed "egos" and before language, we could not know if language users or anything at all, ever existed.

Aphorism of the Day, August 11, 2021

A human sign that there is only one great mediator is the evidence of Language.  Language mediates human existences as it can be known.  Language is omnipresent in human experience and structures it or only understands structure through it.  God appears on the Language radar screen of humanity because language users are forced to continue to use language in Time in anticipation of what will come to language next.  In language, we are always trying to name the yet unnameable and so in English we have given the yet unnameable the temporary or temporal name "God."

Aphorism of the Day, August 10, 2021

The failure to recognize the difference between artistic and faith discourse of the Bible from common sense and empirical discourse by Christians seems to also make them vulnerable to all kinds current conspiracies regarding vaccinations.  Reading religious and faith discourse wrongly results in reading and interpreting the current events of the world wrongly as well leading to the deaths of many who refuse to get vaccinated.

Aphorism of the Day, August 9, 2021

The writer of John's Gospel is presenting a vision of how flesh or physical world and spirit as inner world of human beings are united in Word or Language.  Word or Language is co-extensive with knowing what is outside and what is inside and Word unites everything in the entire body of what can occur within a discursive universe.  The writer of John uses the common sense obviousness of our habits of perceiving the world through our senses.  Common sense tells us, seeing is real, touching is real, hearing is real, smelling is real, tasting is real.  In common sense reality the empirical experience of the five senses is what is regarded to be substantial.  But with rhetorical counterpoint, the authors is asserting that common sense substantiality is only known because we assume the more basic substantial experience of word and language as language users.  The Word is made flesh and the flesh is only known through words and this means that one should not get trapped in the alienation of acting as though the physical perceptual world is somehow independent of the inner world of having words as language users.  John's Gospel writer is trying to coax readers back to quality of our inner word life as the spiritually and morally prior substantiality of human experience.

Aphorism of the Day, August 8, 2021

Language organizes the world of people.  John's Gospel recognizes this by stating that Word is with God from the beginning and all things are created or having their recognized being because of Word.  Jesus as prime exemplar of how a language user's life should be lived came to deliver words as Spirit and life, namely to interdict the interior words of people that guided their behaviors manifest in their exterior worlds in their behaviors.  Words are our Spirit and life and we need continual pressure by words on the word constituted volitional center within us so that through words we choose the best words to guide our body language, i.e. our morals and ethics.

Aphorism of the Day, August 7, 2021

In John's Gospel we learn that the world is created by Word or language in the way that existence can be made known to human language users.  John's Gospel states that the the Word is made flesh.  This is an incredible insight about the reality of language or words within a human body to in effect be the "spirit" in the the body.  And Jesus was a Worded being in an exemplary way so that all worded beings, i.e., language users, could be given a pattern of how to use words.  Jesus, in John's Gospel, also said, "My words are Spirit and they are life."  Words co-exist with everything that can be known to exist.  One of the further insights from this is that our word-life is our spirit-life.  They are the inward and invisible templates and paradigms which become our flesh in our word products of body language, speech and writing.

Aphorism of the Day, August 6, 2021

We can often live like the physical world, the world exterior to us has an independent existence from individual and collective interior life.  The spirituality of Jesus and his teaching is about the priority of the inward life as being constituted by words to be scripted to live in integrated ways with the exterior world.  Christ as Eternal Word is the process of rearranging the prism of our words so that the energy of desire can shine through and energize the best and most appropriate words and deeds that we bring to our lives.  Jesus wants to do an inside job on us and shows us that the inward life is prior to the outward life.

Aphorism of the Day, August 5, 2021

We often assume that physical instincts like hunger and thirst are natural and self evident but in fact they are processed within a community of people which is organized around satisfying hunger and thirst.  The inward morals which organize people to feed the infant and the dependent, precedes the actual feeding.  So humans do not live by bread alone, they live by the word which organizes their lives to partake of bread.  The inward moral, spiritual, or word life of people precede their interaction with the world to feed themselves.  This moral change on how to manipulate the world for the care of each other was the spiritual meaning that the words of Jesus indicate in his bread of heaven discourse.

Aphorism of the Day, August 4, 2021

How do we convert perceptual presentation to poetic insight in understanding biblical phrases like "I have come down from heaven?"  It literally means "I have come down from the skies."   A perceptual "coming down from heaven" is a metaphor for an arising from an "inward and spiritual place" with "elevation" being a metaphor for "spiritual" as it contrasts to the physical.  The effort of literalists to maintain perceptual physical in a world which does not have the same cosmology of the peoples of the ancient world is to distort and sacrifice the ability to cite relevant corresponding metaphorical and meaningful truth for people in the postmodern age.

Aphorism of the Day, August 3, 2021

The appropriation of the symbols of the Hebrew Scriptures by the early Christ-based communities is part of the liminal phase of the separation of the church from the synagogue.  How much of how Scriptures can be interpreted to explain Christ and the mission to the Gentiles and new liturgical practices be generated before the mission of Judaism and the mission of the church needed to be differentiated into two separate groups so that communal peace could happen in both?

Aphorism of the Day, August 2, 2021

Bread from heaven finds it metaphorical signage in the daily rain of Manna from the skies in the continual feeding of the Israelites in the wilderness.  The bread of heaven was a "daily" bread  as in the famous prayer request, "give us this day, our daily bread."  Bread from heaven was/is a metaphor for the Eucharistic bread.  As pervasive as the identity of the bread of heaven metaphor has provided for Christian identity, one can't help but notice how these metaphors of communal identity do not take hold in society-at-large.  The proliferation of some many new poetical identities have eroded the stable identifying metaphors of traditional religion.  For a new hearing for old metaphors, we need new translators who understand the postmodern age well enough to create apt correspondences so that there can be an "eternal return of the same" in forming community identity in a new voice.

  Aphorism of the Day, August 1, 2021

The classical Greek word "pistos" meant persuasion or confidence or trust.  These pertained to rhetoric or speech making.  Persuasion was a goal of speech making and success of persuasion was tied to the credibility that the speaker could promote to the listener.  Could the audience have trust and confidence in the speaker?  "pistos" in New Testament Greek is translated as faith both as noun and action.  Jesus said the work of God (for humans) is to have faith, to believe whom God has sent.  One can see how the nuances of the classic Greek word "pistos" were relevant in how it was used in the New Testament.  Persuasion, confidence, and trust directed toward the one who is the most trustworthy is our life vocation.  Or as the devotional classic is called, "My Utmost for the Highest."

Quiz of the Day, August 2021

Quiz of the Day, August 31, 2021

Which book of the New Testament is most explicit about the connection between faith and good works?

a. Romans

b. Galatians

c. Ephesians

d. James

Quiz of the Day, August 30, 2021

What humanly impossible thing occurred at the dedication of the Solomon's Temple?

a. the sacrifice of 120,000 sheep

b. the sacrifice of 22,000 oxen

c. a fire from heaven consuming all of the animal offerings

d. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, August 29, 2021

Of the following, who wrote perhaps the most famous autobiography in Christian history?

a. The Venerable Bede

b. Augustine of Hippo

c. St. Gregory the Great

d. John of the Cross

Quiz of the Day, August 28, 2021

Whose ear did Simon Peter cut off with a sword?

a. Mark's

b. Malchus'

c. an unknown soldier's

d. Cyprian's

Quiz of the Day, August 27, 2021

Which biblical country was famous for its cedar trees?

a. Jordan

b. Syria 

c. Lebanon

d. Phoenicia

Quiz of the Day, August 26, 2021

What biblical figure was considered wise for suggesting that a baby be cut in two?

a. Jeremiah

b. Moses

c. Hosea

d. Amos

Quiz of the Day, August 25, 2021

Who might be called the "Father" of the Wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures?

a. David

b. Moses

c. Isaiah

d. Solomon

Quiz of the Day, August 24, 2021

A Jacob's ladder reference is found in the encounter of Jesus with whom?

a. Peter

b. Nathaniel

c. John the Baptist

d. Mary Magdalene

Quiz of the Day, August 23, 2021

Of the following, who did not support the succession of Solomon to the throne of David?

a. Bathsheba

b. Nathan

c. Joab

d. Shemei

e. Zadok

Quiz of the Day, August 22, 2021

David chose pestilence as a punishment from God for doing what?

a. for the killing of Uriah the Hittite

b. for his adultery with Bathsheba

c. for taking a census of the people

d. for failing to build a temple

Quiz of the Day, August 21, 2021

What was the name of King Agrippa's wife?

a. Candace

b. Bernice

c. Eunice

d. Lois

Quiz of the Day, August 20, 2021

Of the following, who is known for his sermons on the Song of Songs?

a. St. Teresa of Avila

b. St. John of the Cross

c. St. Bernard of Clairvaux

d. St. Gregory the Great

Quiz of the Day, August 19, 2021

What did Jesus say about marriage in heaven?

a. there is none

b. one is married to one's first spouse

c. one is married to one's last spouse

d. one can choose a different spouse

Quiz of the Day, August 18, 2021

Before Absalom was killed he

a. was ambushed

b. he was trapped in a canyon

c. he smoked out of a cave

d. he caught his long hair in branches of a tree

Quiz of the Day, August 17, 2021

Forty opponents of Paul in Jerusalem made what vow?

a. to stone Paul

b. to fast until they killed Paul

c. to turn him in to the chief priests for trial

d. to tell lies to the centurions about Paul

Quiz of the Day, August 16, 2021

How many times does the name Mary, the mother of Jesus appear in the Gospel of Mark and in the writings of St. Paul?

a. 0

b. 1

c. 2

d. 3

Quiz of the Day, August 15, 2021

The Immaculate Conception refers to human origin of what person?

a. Isaac

b. Samuel

c. John the Baptist

d. Mary the Virgin

e. Jesus

Quiz of the Day, August 14, 2021

What behaviors by Shimei were tolerated by King David?

a. throwing rocks at David

b. cursing David

c. flinging dust at David

d. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, August 13, 2021

Who was Jeremy Taylor's patron?

a. Archbishop Cranmer

b. Archbishop Laud

c. Archbishop Pole

d. Archbishop Whitgift

Quiz of the Day, August 12, 2021

Which of David's son attempted a coup against him?

a. Solomon

b. Absalom

c. Nathan

d. Adonijah

e. Cheliab

f.  Shammua

Quiz of the Day, August 11, 2021

What does the Matthean "exception" refer to?

a. fasting

b. murder

c. coveting

d. divorce

e. lying

Quiz of the Day, August 10, 2021

Who was Agabus?

a. a prophet who warned David

b. a member of the house church of Priscilla and Aquila

c. a prophet who prophesied that Paul would be seized in Jerusalem

d. a leader in the Corinthian church

Quiz of the Day, August 9, 2021

David had the most conflictive relationship with which of his sons?

a. Solomon

b. Absalom

c. Amnon

d. Daniel

Quiz of the Day, August 8, 2021

Which of the following is not true regarding Amnon?

a. he was David's first born

b. he was his brother Absalom's best friend

c. he violated his half sister Tamar

d. he fooled his father David

Quiz of the Day, August 7, 2021

Who was Jedidiah?

a. another name for David's son Solomon

b. Nathan's son

c. Bathsheba's brother

d. David and Abigail's son

Quiz of the Day, August 6, 2021

Which of the following mountains was probably not ascended or viewed by Jesus?

a. Tabor

b. Gerazim

c. Herman

d. Sinai

e. Olives

f.  Zion

Quiz of the Day, August 5, 2021

Who was the husband of Bathsheba?

a. David

b. Uriah

c. Solomon

d. a and b

e. none of the above

Quiz of the Day, August 4, 2021

Where does "walking trees"  occur in the Bible?

a. Book of Revelation in the vision of John the Divine

b. In the poetry of the Psalmist

c. In the retort of Job to one of his "accusers"

d. In the healing of a blind man by Jesus

Quiz of the Day, August 3, 2021

Which of the following is not true regarding Priscilla and Aquila?

a. they were companions of Paul

b. they were evicted from Rome

c. they were tentmakers

d. they told Apollos to keep following the teachings of John the Baptist

Quiz of the Day, August 2, 2021

Which of the following is not true regarding Nathan the Prophet?

a. he anointed Solomon to be king

b. he confronted David about his Bathsheba affair

c. he offered an oracle about the everlasting house of David

d. he was the chief teacher of Solomon

Quiz of the Day, August 1, 2021

Which of the following is not true regarding Michal?

a. she was Saul's daughter

b. she was David's wife

c. she did not approve of David's dancing unclothed before the Ark

d. she had another husband

e. she was devoted to the Philistine gods

Religion As Putting Lipstick on a Pig?

14 Pentecost Cycle B proper 17 August 29, 2021
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9Ps. 15
James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Lectionary Link

It seems as though Jesus treated some religious behaviors like the farmer who entered his pig in the wrong contest at the County Fair.  He put some lipstick on the pig and tried entered his porker in the Miss County Fair contest.  But of course, the lipstick could not cover the true identity.

Jesus exposed that  some religious activity was a game played before God and within community.  Religious leaders were stressing the religious purification rituals like liturgical police to prove to God and everyone what good people they were.  It gave them permission to excommunicate those "dirty" people who don't know how and when to wash their hands correctly.

Washing hands is very important and not just for religious show; Joseph Lister ushered in the notion of a sterile field to keep at bay the spreading of those dirty germs which can harm us.

In our spiritual lives we have a much bigger problem than dirty germs; we have to deal with our inward lives which for a good portion of the time are not worthy of publishing to the world at large.

Outward filth is an external problem and certainly germs can become an internal health problem in our bodies.

Jesus was telling the religious people not to mistake physical dirt for the inward cesspools which our interior lives can become.  If we really want to clean up our act, we have to deal with the inner life.

The inner life is the great problem.  St. Paul in his struggles said the things that he did not want to do, he did anyway, and the things he wanted to do, he did not find the power to do.  This is the wretched experience of dealing with uncontrollable and the Pandora's box of our interior lives.

The Psalmist in desperation cried out for a clean heart and a renewed spirit.  Jeremiah said that above all, the heart is exceedingly deceitful, and who can know the depth of such deceit?  Martin Luther expounded upon the perpetuity of human depravity, which co-exists with the needed experience of grace.  Sigmund Freud wrote that the unconscious mind is polymorphously perverse.

Early in life each person has the problem of coherent agreement on all levels of being: in how one feels inside, in how one comports one's body language, and in the words that one uses.

A problem is life is that we only allow babies and young children full honesty.  A young toddler wants something, a baby screams for what is wanted, a baby reaches out to take whatever is wanted.  But such behaviors we only allow for but a short time. What happens when babies have to learn the adult world?

Human adult laws interdict and restrain the child.  Harmful outcomes slowly teach us.  Putting one hand in the fire burns, so one stops doing it.  We also learn adult suppression, like "the customer is always right."  Adult protocols set in which cause internal division, like when a customer is rude, but the clerk has to smile and accept the abuse and suppress feelings disgust.

The law is supposed to teach us to inwardly desire the recommended outcomes of lawful behaviors.  And our interior lives become at odds with the law.  We desire inwardly what the outward law does not permit.  And we either try to be sneaky and not get caught,  or out of fear of punishment we do not do what we want to do and as a result we might live in perpetual resentment of being required to do things that are actually good for us.

Jesus had a high standard for the inward life.  In the beatitudes, he stated that to hate and be angry and to have lust are the same thing as murder or adultery.  And of course, in our jurisprudence and social life, we know this is not practically true, since doing wrong gets us in trouble, not thinking or desiring wrong.

Jesus gave us a vision of perfection which is so high, that we are promised great opportunity to grow in holiness, so that we cannot presume to be those adequate to write other people off and judge them because they are at their own place of spiritual growth.

If we are are honest, we know that our inward life and the objects which we desire wrongly, means that we are always in need of the graceful interdiction of God's words to rearrange our inward lives so that we can see and desire differently and be gradually made more Christian so that our desire is trained to work for us rather than against us.  But this is indeed a lifetime of training.

The writer of James encourages us to be in recovery from our hypocrisy of living "do what I say, don't do as I do," lifestyles.  The entire purpose of the grace of spiritual practice and transformation is to be delivered from the divided lives of hypocrisy and come to inner union and peace so that desire, words and deeds can agree in the unified practice of the love of God and our neighbor.

Even when we think we're making progress, a life incident can trigger the uncontrolled misbehaviors of our inward life.  If you don't think so, just think about the thoughts that you have had about someone who has said or done something you think is really stupid.  And suddenly, one's interior life is all aroused.

Jesus Christ reminds us about how bad we can be but also about how good we can become to show us that we are in this lifetime process of transformation in being made more Christian, more Christ-like.  And we come here today not because we think our church behavior is a lipstick on our horrendous inner lives.  We come here today because, we want to say, "Lord Jesus Christ, I am with you and for you, as you and your words continue to do do an inside job on me as I seek to be made a better Christian.  We come here today, because we are renewed in the grace of Christ which makes up for our lack of yet being finished and perfect beings.  Amen.